Forum:Deinonychus vs Velociraptor
Our velociraptors differ significantly from the fossil record. They're perhaps three times as large as they should be. They're definitely velociraptors, but based on size alone, they appear to have more in common with Utahraptor or Deinonychus. - Laura Sorkin, InGen Field Journal It is claimed over and over on this wiki and the web that the "Velociraptors" in the JP films are actually Deinonychuses. However, this is only because they are too large. Laura Sorkin claims that the raptors are anatomically similar to the real-life Velociraptor mongoliensis, but just larger. What is true? Does anyone knows, apart from the size, what other differences there are between Deinonychus and Velociraptor? MismeretMonk 09:13, February 3, 2012 (UTC) Category:Park Pedia:The Jurassic Park wiki --The Palaeontologist 21:07, February 3, 2012 (UTC)The Palaeontologist Good question. Skull shape, Palaeoecology, Prey target maximum sizes, D' lived over 120 million years ago V' 'only' 70 odd Palaeoenvironment eg D in lush area. V in semi arid to desert etc :Is it possible to see if Velociraptor antirrhopus is a Deinonychus or a huge Velociraptor mongoliensis?? MismeretMonk 09:27, February 5, 2012 (UTC) Here are the skulls of the two. Which is the one from Jurassic Park??? ]] '']] If I compare these skulls with the Raptors from the films: File:BigOne06.jpg File:BigOne04.jpg File:Velo.jpg File:G.jpg I think the film Raptors don't look like Deinonychus at all. They're just Velociraptors, but larger. MismeretMonk (talk) 21:34, November 12, 2012 (UTC) Unless ofcourse a V. mongoliensis should have a much longer skull like this: MismeretMonk (talk) 21:54, November 12, 2012 (UTC) '''So here's the deal ---- At the time the Velociraptors in JP were originally created, they were in fact "accurate". When Michael Crichton first wrote Jurassic Park in the mid-late 80's, he based many of his dinosaurs on depictions and classifications by the unorthodox paleo-artist Gregory S. Paul, who had classified the recently discovered Deinonychus antirrhopus as well as other species such as Dromeaosaurus and the then yet to be described Achillobator giganticus all under the genus of "Velociraptor". Crichton used these classifications when he wrote Jurassic Park. It is due to constant scientific updating, that these creatures became scientifically obsolete very soon. These classifications and designs were then carried over to the film version, which Spielberg had already planned on making, before the book was even published. The designs were copied as so to be accurate to the novel, not science. When Jurassic Park /// came out in '03, in the paleontological community was already favoring the idea that ALL raptors had feathers. But it was already too late for JP as the image of the Deinonychus-sized, featherless Raptor had already been imprinted into the Jurassic Park fan community, and it was too late to go back from that. What they did instead was attempt to "update" the design, however in doing so, the JP/// raptors become even less like a dromaeosarine(the subfamily of dinosaurs that holds all the more famous of the "Raptors", i.e. Utahraptor, Velociraptor, Achillobator, Deinonychus). Despite the few pitiful quills given to the JP/// raptors (which no maniraptorforme, the clade that holds all sickle-clawed dinosaurs and their descendants all the way to modern birds, had), the snout is given two large ridges jutting off of it, which is nothing like any snout of any known maniraptor. Also Skull Comparison: JP Raptor Skull JP & TLW- JP/// Raptor Skull- The real animals: Deinonychus antirrhopus- :this skull is very different from the Deinonychus skull shown above, why?MismeretMonk (talk) 16:54, November 13, 2012 (UTC) *this skull is used as the demonstration as it matches how Greg Paul illustrated the skull of Deinonychus, as per these images: realraptor.png skeletal.gif Then there is the skull of V. mongoliensis- As is evident, the skull of V. mongoliensis is much more robust than the skull of D. antirrhopus. Furthering the separation of these two genera is the Late-Cretaceous Pacific Ocean and two vastly different environments and ecologies. This is expressed in their anatomical features. Where Velociraptor is small and lithe, turkey-sized, Deinonychus is built a bit more like a wolf and is relative to a tiger in size. Truthfully, the Raptors in JP could be denied the status of neither Deinonychus antirrhopus,Velociraptor mongoliensis, Velociraptor antirrhopus, or any other combination. Film evidence (the screenshot above and it's subsequent comparison with the original Greg Paul diagram the screen depicts), as well as the evidence of version numbers (almost like software), suggests that these animals were genetically altered to display the how the public, rather than how contemporary paleontology, believed dinosaurs to appear. -Jhayk' Sulliy 18:38, November 12, 2012 (UTC) :"Raptors in JP could be denied the status of neither ''Deinonychus antirrhopus,Velociraptor mongoliensis, Velociraptor antirrhopus, or any other combination."'' :That doesn't really help. Velociraptor and Deinonychus have really different heads. What does the JP raptor resemble to? What does its overal bodyplan resemble to? If they are a combination of both, what characteristics resemble which animal? MismeretMonk (talk) 16:51, November 13, 2012 (UTC) Presently, they resemble neither animal as we know of them, but the Raptors of Jurassic Park could definitively be marked as Deinonychus by a single feature: the resonating chamber. As we know, Dr. Grant in JP/// was excavating a "Velociraptor" in Montana, and in accordance to Gregory S. Paul taxonomy, that would make the animals in the films Deinonychus. -- 19:38, November 13, 2012 (UTC) :The montana skull in JPIII doesn't look like a Deinonychus to me: File:Stock-photo-583501-deinonychus-skull.jpg|Deinonychus'' File:VelociraptorSkull3.jpg|Velociraptor mongoliensis' File:Raptorscan.jpg|Montana skull from JPIII :I'm sorry but that JP3 skull looks much more like a Velociraptor than Deinonychus. G. S. Paul has nothing to do with this discussion.MismeretMonk (talk) 17:08, November 16, 2012 (UTC) G. S. Paul has '''everything' to do with this. It is his unorthodox classification of D. antirrhopus as a "Velociraptor" that explains this entire scenario. Because it's a "Velociraptor" that Grant is excavating in Montana, that must mean it is a Deinonychus under a G. S. Paul taxonomy. Gregory Paul is infamous for his nomenclatural "clumping", or the taking of many species of dinosaurs that share only physical characteristics (and may or may not be related evolutionarily) and grouping them all under the same genus. Greg Paul did this with Sauronitholestes langstoni, Velociraptor mongoliensis, and Deinonychus antirrhopus, clumping them all under the genus "Velociraptor", when all three have nothing to do with the others evolutionarily. Sauronitholestes is from Late-Cretaceous Alberta, Velociraptor is from Late-Cretaceous Mongolia/China, and Deinonychus is from Middle-Cretaceous Montana/Wyoming. All 3 of these animals have no direct evolutionary lineage to each other, however according to Gregory S. Paul they are all "Velociraptor". As for the skull, Let me break that down for you. Compared to the skull seen on the live animal, (and here's a diagram labeling the parts of a therapoda dinosaur skull to help), the nasal is a lot less angled. The scanned skull has a nasal angle of 20 degrees, vs 5 degrees on the live animal (the skull of V. antirrhopus depicted in this scan I made of a page from Paul's Predatory Dinosaurs of the World is also 5 degrees; the V. mongoliensis skull is 7 degrees, also note that the V. mongoliensis skull depicted is the holotype, and therefore the representative skull for all depictions of V. mongoliensis). Next, the intermandibular side of the surangular is more robust on the live animal than what is seen on the skull in the film(or in Paul's diagram) The nasal ridges I won't mention as those could be cartilaginous features and therefore would not fossilize. Next, the lacrimal of the live animal is angled the opposite direction from the lacrimal of the skull. This also effects the shape of the antorbital fossa , which is longer and narrower in the live animal than depicted on the skull. The dentary on the live animal is more gracile on the live animal than depicted in the skull. When we compare the features, we see somewhat of a hybrid between the skull that Greg Paul drew and the skull on the digsite scanner (and I say hybrid because of the frontal ridge that is found on both the scanned skull and the live animal, but is not depicted in Paul's drawing of the skull). Now, comparing the V. mongoliensis skull to the scanned skull in the film. The nasal of the V. mongoliensis is angled 7 degrees (far less than the scanned skull), perfectly matching the skull depicted by Paul. This makes sense as it is a replica of the holotype, after all. Next, the split between the lacrimal and the nasal is completely in the wrong spot. The division takes place closer to the dorsal plane of the nasal, than it does on a true V. mongoliensis skull. Next, the naris of the true V. mongoliensis skull is is gigantic in comparison to the digsite scan, which also has a thinner premaxilla over the naris. The mandibular fenestra is thinner on the digsite scanner mandible than on the true V. mongoliensis mandible. The dentary on the digsite mandible is far more robust than the dentary of the true V. mongoliensis skull. The maxilla are completely different shapes, the parietal and squamosal is far longer and more exaggerated on the scanner skull than on the true V. mongolisensis skull, and is actually more comparable to the squamosal and parietal of V. antirrhopus. The angular of the digsite skull is more robust than on true V. mongoliensis. Then there.s the subnarial gap that is found on the upper jawline of the true V. mongoliensis skull that is not present in either the upper jawline of Greg Paul's V. antirrhopus, the live animal, or the digsite skull. When all is said and done, the digsite skull looks NOTHING like a true V. mongoliensis skull. -- 22:25, November 16, 2012 (UTC) :Listen dude, I'm gonna restate the question asked here: To what real-life animal do the JP raptors resemble? This is about the real-life Deinonychus and Velociraptor. We are not discussing what G. S. Paul, Stan Winston or Jack Horner believed a Velociraptor looked like 20 years ago. This is what we want to know: * What is the scientific consensus about what Deinonychus looked like? * What is the scientific consensus about what Velociraptor looked like? * To which one does the JP raptor resemble most? I don't want to hear ANYTHING about how G. freaking Paul thought a Velociraptor looked like. Got that? I'm not gonna read through all your text since you're more concerned with explaining Paul's version of the creatures then answering these questions. Can ye just give a response to these 3 questions? MismeretMonk (talk) 00:07, November 17, 2012 (UTC)